


For Want of Wings

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Comment Fic 2016 [1]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-02
Updated: 2016-03-02
Packaged: 2018-05-24 08:14:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6147374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for this <a class="i-ljuser-profile" href="http://comment-fic.livejournal.com/profile"><img class="i-ljuser-userhead"/></a><a class="i-ljuser-username" href="http://comment-fic.livejournal.com/">comment_fic</a>  prompt: "Any, any, someone gets (permanent) wings." Rodney has wings. Major Lorne is a genius with a needle and thread. John teaches Rodney how to fly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For Want of Wings

"This is ridiculous," Rodney huffed. He huddled on the hospital cot, wings tight down around him, expression small with misery. "Can't you just cut them off or something?"

Dr. Keller looked horrified. "No! Rodney, they're part of you. They're your limbs now."

"Well, they're not useful, are they? I can't wear my clothes properly anymore, let alone fit in a tac vest, so I can't go off-world, and they keep knocking things over in the lab. So why can't I get rid of them? Doctors cut unwanted things out of humans all the time - gall bladders, appendixes. Fetuses."

An unreadable expression crossed Dr. Keller's face. "I'm not amputating your wings, Rodney. You have _wings_." She spun on her heel and walked away. Teyla went with her, cradling Torren in her arms.

Maybe Rodney shouldn't have yelled so much while he was sleeping.

Rodney slumped and sat back, winced when his wings collided with the mattress at a bad angle. "These stupid things don't even fly."

Ronon clapped him on the shoulder. "Good luck, man." And he left.

John was eyeing Rodney with frightening intensity. "How do you know they don't allow you to fly?"

"Because they're stupid." Rodney prodded one graceful, white feathered appendage sulkily.

"Have you tried?"

"No."

"Then let's try." John hauled Rodney off of the cot and out of the infirmary.

John Sheppard was insane. In the days that followed, he seemed to have abandoned all of his duties and focused on the problem of Rodney and his pointless wings. Instead of doing military commander-y things, John was trying to teach Rodney to fly. And he'd gotten other people in on the madness. He sent marines to scout for a possible training location (off an upper pier somewhere or something equally high and frightening). He had Zelenka and the scientists designing some kind of safety landing pad for Rodney. And he had Major Lorne - who, apparently, was some kind of genius with a needle and thread when he wasn't helping John run the military side of Atlantis - modifying all of Rodney's shirts and jackets and even his tac vest to fit around his wings.

Woolsey wouldn't clear Rodney for gate travel till he had his wings under control. Rodney thought that no longer knocking things or people over accidentally with a stray thought was control enough, but still Woolsey hadn't cleared him.

And then all of John's plans came together. There was a short pier used as a docking bay, with a repair bay below that extended further out. Zelenka had recreated Michael's stun bubble to exclude the stun effect but include a new, softer cushioning effect, and set it and a little generator on the repair bay. Rodney stood at the edge of the training pier, looked down at the long, long drop, and nearly threw up.

"You can't be serious. You're just going to push me off the pier? You'll kill me!"

John rolled his eyes. "As much as I'd like to just shove you off the pier - and some people might thank me for it - I'm not an idiot. I am a pilot, and I did go to flight school. You've never flown before, and you have no sense of what it requires of your body. Have you even tried to flap your wings?"

Rodney thrust his chin out defiantly. "No. I'm not a damned bird."

"You can't fly without flapping your wings at least a little bit," John said. "I talked to the zoologists, and after studying some of Dr. Keller's scans of your wings, they're more like raptor wings than goose wings, so you'll need to flap a little bit but then you can ride thermals instead of flapping the entire time. So flap your wings."

Rodney snapped them out and flapped them once, hard, without warning.

It was good to know that Zelenka's landing cushion bubble worked.

John was still glaring at Rodney when he emerged from the transporter on the upper pier. "You only get to do that once. Now do it again."

Rodney didn't have to think very hard to make his wings flap. They just...did it. The same way his hands moved when he was typing. But the sensation - the wind through his feathers - was weird. (He had feathers! That was weird. At least he'd gotten exclusive access to one of the jacuzzi baths after he could no longer fit into his shower.)

"Okay, so I can flap my wings," Rodney said. "Now what? You want me to jump?"

John shook his head. "How are you feeling?"

Rodney rolled his eyes. "Fine. Now can I jump off the pier and prove these stupid wings don't work so we can be done with this madness?"

John shoved him in the chest, hard. "How are you feeling?"

"Ow!" That hurt like the blazes. Literally. Like burning. Like Rodney's muscles were burning. "What did you do that for?"

"You flapped your wings twice and now your chest muscles hurt," John said patiently. "You won't gain sufficient altitude with two flaps. You need to build your strength."

Rodney scowled. "I can't lift weights." He didn't fit on any of the gym equipment.

"Flap your wings again."

"But it hurts!"

"Of course it does. But the more you do it, less it'll hurt."

"That's terrible logic."

"Not today, obviously. But over time. Come on. This is your flying work-out."

"But...the landing bubble."

"Is for a later day," John said. "Now come on. Start flapping, Rodney."

In so many other contexts, that could be taken as something very dirty. But then Rodney realized. This training space was private. Far from the main living and working areas. Unless someone was specifically out there to watch Rodney train, no one would know.

Did he really want to know how to fly?

He'd always made fun of John and Lorne and Mitchell for being stuck-up zoomies, stupid fly-boys who chose thrill-seeking over something useful (John's math skills could be very useful beyond games of Prime/Not Prime). But Rodney remembered the look in John's eyes the first time he really got to take a jumper for a spin, try tricks and turns.

Maybe he would be able to feel like that. So he spread his wings, and he flapped.

John was a harsh task-master. He dragged Rodney out of bed every morning and forced him to run a mile. The entire time they were running, Rodney hated him, especially since he knew John was pacing him, slowing down for him, and not running as far as he usually did with Ronon (and he was sacrificing time with Ronon). But then one mile became one and a half, and then two, and then three, and then they were running five miles every morning, and some days Ronon or Lorne would even run with them.

John made Rodney practice his flapping every day, too. (If Rodney was grounded from missions, AR-1 was grounded from missions. There was plenty for them to do around the base anyway.) John had drills. Sometimes he'd make Rodney flap in big, slow sweeps for ten minutes straight. Then he'd let Rodney take a four minute break. Then he'd make Rodney flap as hard and fast as he could for ten minutes. Another four minute break. Then he'd make Rodney flutter his wings like a hummingbird for ten minutes. (He wasn't really making Rodney do anything. Rodney could have said no. He really could have, and John would have let him walk away from it all, but something in John's eyes made him push through the pain.)

For days, Rodney was in constant pain, both from the running and from the flapping. More often than not it was a bother to even try putting on one of his modified shirts (Lorne had finished modifying all of his uniform shirts and was slowly making his way through Rodney's civvies), so he wandered the base shirtless. He was getting a pretty decent tan, if he said so himself. And one of the gate room techs - Emily? Amelia? - commented that he looked like he'd been working out. But somewhere along the way, the pain eased. Rodney's new body, new muscles were used to the exertion.

When Rodney made it though one of John's ridiculous flapping drills without even becoming short of breath, John said,

"Great job. I think you're ready. Now jump off the pier."

Rodney blinked. "What? Just like that?"

"I'm not going to push you off the pier, Rodney. You panicking will not help you fly. At first flying takes a lot of concentration, but once you get the hang of it, it's kind of like dancing."

"I'm a terrible dancer."

"But you have rhythm. Once you catch the beat of the music, you can move to it. I've seen you." John pushed him gently toward the edge of the pier. "Now go on. You're ready."

Rodney looked at the drop and gulped. Sure John had survived the drop thanks to Zelenka's tech, but.

John's voice in his ear was low and reassuring. "Go."

And Rodney flew. He jumped, and for a second he was panicking anyway, but then he remembered to flap, and he flap-flap-flapped till he was climbing, and then he was fumbling, feeling the air beneath his wings, and John was right, it was like music, only he couldn't catch the beat, couldn't catch the thermals, and he flap-flap-flapped again, and his chest was burning, this was hard, he'd never had to flap while supporting his own weight, what the hell was John thinking not factoring that into training? And then he felt it in his feathers. Thermals. And suddenly he wasn't flapping. He was soaring.

He felt weightless. Like a feather. Drifting on the air. A subtle adjustment, and he turned. Another adjustment, and he rolled.

Down on the pier, John was watching. And he was smiling.

Was this how John felt when he flew? Because suddenly Rodney got it. He really did.

Now came the tricky part. Landing.

Rodney felt the air shift under his feathers, and his body knew. He folded his wings and dove. He snapped his wings out at the last second, and he stumbled a bit, but he managed to land on his feet right next to John.

They stared at each other for a long moment.

Then Rodney pumped his fists in the air and did a little victory dance (and nearly knocked John over with an extended wing, which he reflexively folded back into his body). "I did it! I did it!" He grabbed John and yanked him into a crushing hug. " _We_ did it."

"No, Rodney," John said gently, his voice rumbling through his chest, "you did it. You flew."

Rodney pulled back. "Why did you help me?"

John frowned. "What?"

"Why did you do this? You disrupted so many people's work schedules, I was awful to you, I complained the entire time, I pushed you off the pier. Why did you stick it out? This wasn't a science experiment. Physical exertion isn't something I'm brilliant at. I don't understand."

"I love to fly," John said, "and I wanted you to understand how I feel when I'm in the sky. You'll never be an Air Force pilot, but I wanted you to feel what I feel. Or to at least have the chance."

Rodney couldn't quite read the expression in John's eyes.

"Keller was ready to cut them off, you know. In those first few weeks when all you did was complain. But I convinced her to hold off in case you changed your mind. I wanted you to fly - really fly - just once. And if you hated it, well. She has her scalpels and saws ready."

Rodney remembered the giddy sensation of being in the air, of being both weightless and powerful all at once. He curled his wings closer around him. "No. I want to keep them. They're useful now! And Major Lorne spent all that time fixing my shirts and things."

"Then let's get Keller out here so she can see you fly, and we'll get you cleared for gate travel again." John started to turn away, but Rodney caught his arm. John paused and looked at him expectantly.

"John," Rodney began, and faltered. 'Thank you' seemed inadequate. "Will you fly with me?"

"I don't have wings, Rodney."

"You could, if you want to. The Ancient device is still on that planet. It still works." The words tumbled out of Rodney in a rush.

John frowned again. "Why would I want wings of my own?"

"You said yourself, you love to fly. You're a flyboy." Rodney was a genius. He'd totally figured out that expression in John's eyes. "And I've seen the way you look at me. You want wings just like mine."

John chuckled and stepped closer. "No, Rodney. It's not your wings I want."

Maybe Rodney hadn't been a genius about that one thing, but that was totally okay, because John Sheppard was kissing him.

Then John pulled back. "Now, how about I go get a jumper, and then we fly?"  



End file.
